Marcia Brand, Associate Administrator for Health Professions, addresses the meeting.

Mary Wakefield, Associate Dean for Rural Health at the University of North Dakota, speaks at a plenary session.

Irene dela Torre of the Graduate School of Public Health at the University of Puerto Rico stands next to her poster presentation, "Nurse-Midwifery in Puerto Rico."

(Left to Right) Vaneta Condon and Iris Mamier, both from Loma Linda University, and Paulette Williams, University of Hawaii, enjoy a break.

HRSA's John Kress (left) and Debra Olson from the Leadership Council of the Public Health Training Center (PHTC) Network present Christopher Atchison (center) with a certificate of appreciation for two years of service as Council Chair. The PHTC Program is supported by HRSA.

Twelve hundred leaders of health care institutions, medical schools, state and local governments and professional associations met recently in Washington, D.C., for three days of learning, teaching and debate during HRSA’s second Health Professions All-Programs Meeting.

Participants came from organizations that receive grants from HRSA’s Bureau of Health Professions. Led by Associate Administrator for Health Professions Marcia Brand, the bureau works to educate, train, and support a diverse, quality-minded, culturally competent health care workforce that helps ensure access to health care for all Americans.

In keeping with the conference theme to “envision the future of health professions, ”participants heard speakers in plenary and breakout sessions, state meetings, and “coffee chats” address topics ranging from geriatrics training to health information technology to provider shortages. Others emphasized interdisciplinary training, curricula reform, and quality improvements, to name a few of the many issues discussed. More than 150 grantee poster presentations helped disseminate the latest research.

In remarks to the Feb. 25 opening plenary session, HRSA Administrator Elizabeth Duke told the audience that the process of building performance standards capable of measuring the value of the agency’s health professions programs had reached a significant milepost.

“We’re on the verge of reaping the benefits of the groundwork we the established at the first health professions all-programs meeting in 2005. On December 30, 2007, the bureau began collecting data from grantees on the new performance measures. That is a huge step forward,” she said.

“Over the next year, we will establish a baseline for measuring results – results that have been a challenge to quantify in the past,” Duke added.

“These measures will help us tell your story – they’ll help us show the link between the education and training that HRSA supports and the government’s efforts to serve Americans in need and reduce health disparities.”

Duke noted that President Bush’s FY 2008 budget asked for $44 million for nurse training, an increase of $13 million over 2008. Those funds will support over 800 scholarships and loan repayment awards for nurses and nursing students who commit to work in facilities with a critical nursing shortage.

The HRSA budget also asks for $11 million in additional funds for the National Health Service Corps to support new loan repayment contracts for 210 dentists and dental hygienists – over and above the 716 new loan repayment contracts projected to be made this year for the Corps.

Duke also urged listeners to consider the potential of two-year schools to increase both the number and diversity of health care providers, especially in preparing nurses. She followed her remarks by meeting with several groups of grantees throughout the first day.

In luncheon remarks the same day, Brand summarized upcoming bureau initiatives, which include:

• a first-of-its-kind joint meeting in May of BHPr’s legislatively mandated advisory committees;
  
  
• a new HRSA contract with the Institutes of Medicine to examine the status of the oral health workforce; and
  
  
• an increase of $3 million in 2008 for BHPr’s State Oral Health Workforce Program to strengthen the dental workforce and improve access to dental services.

Two days later, Brand ended the all-programs meeting by thanking participants for their commitment to improving training for health professions.

“There are 13 million health care workers in America,” she said. “And there are at least 1,200 people who really care about what happens to them and the people they care for!”